FLVTube Player Virus/Malware Removal

Please Read This Before Posting On the Malware Removal Forum

Please post your log as a reply below. Thanks.

Bad news here:)

My WinXP won't boot anymore. When I powered cycle it, the Dell logo displayed and the bar below it did completed but after that, it's a black screen with the cursor blinking on the upper left hand corner. It stayed there forever. I am not sure if this is related to the FLV Tube Malware installation problem I mentioned. My wife saw the FLV Tube installation unexpectedly ~12:30pm and then left the PC on with network connection till I came back around 7pm. And that is when I saw.

I ran the diagnostic tool from Dell to check the HDD and all tests passed.

What can I do to recover the data and make it boot?

Thanks,

Ken

I tried that. Only F2 (Setup Menu) and F12 (Boot Menu), pressing F8 had no response.

No, not good news.  It is not good to leave a computer with a network connection while there is malware on the system. When that happens the infection is in control. Can you get into Safemode?

In that case, I hope you have good backups of your important files, and that your Recovery Console has been installed.

(You have to repeatedly tap F8 for Safemode while the computer boots, rather than press the key. I assume you did that correctly.)

Are you able to boot from your Windows XP CD?

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

or

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ss/rconsole.htm

In addition here you will find general info describing the different types of restoring a Dell computer:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&docid=58E26A65A4388E4FE040AE0AB7E107E3&l=en&s=gen

Unfortunately, I didn't create any backup before. I can boot from WinXP CD and go into the Recovery Console but cannot get to my data directory because no read permission to other directories except Windows. However, I was able to get the AVG Rescue CD to boot into Linux and mount the HDD to access my data.

My plan will be to copy all my data files to a flash drive and resintall WinXP on the top.

I looked at the link you provided for restoring Dell computer but not sure if it will work for my Vostro 400 computer and will try. The worst case would be to re-install WinXP from scratch and reload all drivers.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Ken

So far, I've worked with 3 computers with this issue. 2 out of the 3, adding a new user and removing the affected user fixed the issue.

Please Read This Before Posting On the Malware Removal Forum